Daughter of God.
Built in the fire.
This is not a bio. It is a testimony. And it starts the same place most real things start. Not with a plan. With a loss.
I grew up knowing the name of God.
I did not know Him yet.
I was raised Catholic. I went to church. I said the prayers. But God was something I carried the way you carry something heavy without asking what is inside.
Music was my world. That was the thing I gave everything to. God was not a part of my daily life in any real way. Not until something happened that I could not explain.
A prophet visited our home while my father was still alive. He was speaking things over our family that no one could have known. I had never seen anything like it. I was raised Catholic. Prophecy was not something you encountered in my church.
And in the middle of everything he was saying, while the room was focused on him, I heard something else. A separate voice. In the spiritual realm. Clear. Strong. Unmistakable.
"But your father will not be there to see it."
I told no one. I was afraid that saying it out loud would make it real. So I kept it inside and I carried it alone.
My father went into a coma.
And God would not stop speaking.
Not long after, my father was in a car accident. He was a cab driver. He blacked out behind the wheel. They found a tumor. It had been growing for a long time without anyone knowing. He went into a coma and he stayed there for a long time.
During that season, something started happening to me. I kept hearing the same thing over and over. Not from a person. Just in my spirit. Get a Bible. The answer is in the Bible. Get a Bible. The answer is in the Bible.
I did not have a relationship with God. I did not know how to pray or read the Bible with any real understanding. But the voice would not stop. So I got the Bible. And I started changing. Cutting things off. Moving toward something I could not yet name.
In 2010, my father died.
I am the type of person who feels everything deeply but you cannot always see it on my face. My heart was broken in a way that had no visible edges. And I did not want to be on this earth anymore. Even though I was angry at God, I still wanted to be in His arms. I could not explain that at the time. I just knew it was true.
Nobody knew what I was doing.
But God did.
The same prophet came to our home again after my father passed. Out of respect for how I was raised, I was there. But I sat in the corner against the wall and I did not want to hear what anyone had to say. Not even God.
I closed my eyes. And I started imagining myself going up. Through the ceiling. Through the clouds. Just up and up and up. I could see it clearly. I wanted to be wherever my father was. I wanted off this earth.
The prophet stopped mid-sentence. He said God was telling him to speak to the one sitting beside him. He said God said to tell her: come back down. He has you in His arms. Come back down.
My mouth was shut. My eyes were shut. My heart was shut. I had not told a single person what I was doing. There was no way he could have known.
But God knew. And from that moment, every question I had ever carried about whether God was real was gone. He is real. I have never doubted it since.
"He has you in His arms. Come back down."
What God said. 2010.
The assignment came in phases.
I picked it up. I put it down.
I picked it up again.
Dear Diaries was not a straight line. It was an assignment I accepted in parts, through different seasons, as God kept bringing me back to it each time I thought I was done. That is not failure. That is how obedience actually works sometimes. You do not always receive the full picture at once. You get enough to move. Then you move.
In 2020 I built Bibi Portraits, my luxury photography business. Six figures. Built with God. Every skill I needed showed up when the assignment required it. I learned systems, strategy, branding, production. Not in a classroom. In the fire.
I was learning something in every season even when it did not look like learning. Even when it looked like starting over. Even when it looked like nothing was working. God was building the capacity in me that the next assignment would require.
"Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other."
Nehemiah 4:17
God gave me a crown.
And I was not impressed.
I was having a vision and I saw a crown coming down upon me. God had given me crowns before. But I was frustrated with life at that point. And honestly, I was not moved by it.
I looked at the crown and I said to Him: okay Lord, what is this one for. And I heard Him say: this is a crown of endurance.
I was not happy about that. Because in my mind, endurance meant more was coming. Why would He give me a crown of endurance unless there was more to endure. So I carried that. I kept building but I carried the weight of what I thought it meant.
Then a friend said something that stopped me. She said when God gives you a crown it means you have already overcome. You already passed. Like a graduation. The crown does not come before the trial. It comes after.
"The crown was not a warning about what was ahead. It was a receipt for what I had already walked through."
God was not showing me the fire. He was showing me that I had come through it and was still standing. The crown was already mine. It had been mine the whole time. I just did not know how to read it.
I woke up and saw one word.
BRICK.
I was in the middle of pre-selling the I AM SAFE Journal. Stressed about the money. About having people's deposits and needing to get the product into their hands. My cousin said something that stuck with me. He said: that is not your money. That is people's money. He was right. And the weight of that was real.
One night I had a dream. In the dream we were helping a friend build her house. We took a break and I got on the phone. But a friend of mine kept adding people to the call. More and more women coming in. And the conversation kept shifting.
One woman asked me about building a website. I said I can show you how. Another one asked if I could make her a sandwich. I laughed and said yes, I make good sandwiches. Someone else asked about marketing. Someone else offered a skill to the group. Skills crossing over. People helping each other build. A woman told me she could count on purchasing a journal. The conversation just kept going.
And then I woke up. And I saw the word BRICK in my mind's eye.
Immediately God gave me the interpretation. He said: I want you to build a community called BRICK. For women. I want you to have a barter system. I want you to have micro-grants. I want you to help them because I need them to build the things I made them to build. And they need help. Just like you did.
"I cried. Not because I did not want to. Because I was so touched by it. I understood why He had let me go through the struggle. So that when He asked me to build this, I would say yes not just out of obedience. Out of compassion."
Throughout that same day I kept hearing one word. Nehemiah. Nehemiah. Nehemiah. So I went and read the story. And I started crying all over again.
In the dream we were helping my friend build her house. In Nehemiah's story he rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem to protect God's people. Each woman builds her own thing. Her house. Her assignment. Her calling. But she has a sword in one hand because she may have to fight while she builds. And BRICK is the wall. The community that covers what she is building.
The scripture said He gives you
the power to gain wealth.
I finally understood what power meant.
Deuteronomy 8:18. I had read it. I had heard it taught. But in late 2025 something shifted in how I understood it. The Hebrew word in that verse is koach. And koach does not just mean money or financial ability.
Koach means strength. Capacity. Stamina. Skill. God did not hand you a dollar. He handed you everything you would need for the road. Every hard season. Every skill learned in the fire. Every business built from zero. Every time you kept going when it made no sense. That was koach being built in you. Not given to you later. Built in you now. For this.
That word became the spine of everything. It explained the building years. It explained the crown. It explained why God did not remove the fire but stayed in it with me instead. The strength was never coming later. It was always already here.
If any part of this story
sounds like yours,
this is where you start.
Power to Gain Wealth is a free 7-day course built on the word koach. It is not about money. It is about the strength God already placed in you. Start there. Everything else follows.
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